As the effects of climate change become more visible across walks of life, people in the colonial-era tea gardens in Jorhat are also feeling the heat as they try to cope with rising temperatures and erratic rainfall.
Unrest is brewing among Assam's so-called Tea Tribes, whose forefathers were brought here by British planters from neighbouring Bihar and Odisha more than a century ago, as changing weather patterns upset the economics of the industry.
Scientists say climate change is to blame for uneven rainfall that is cutting yields and lifting costs for tea firms such as McLeod Russel, Tata Global Beverages and Jay Shree Tea.
While rainfall has declined and become concentrated, temperatures have risen - ideal conditions for pests like looper caterpillar and tea mosquito to infest the light green tea shoots just before they are ready to be plucked for processing.
Deputy Chairman of Tea Board of India, Prabhat Bezbaruah, said that the infestation of pests was a very major worry for the tea planters.
"The pests and disease incidents have gone up tremendously over the last five to seven years. May be even more if you take the last decade and compare it to previous decade, pests and diseases are much more prevalent now than before," said Bezbaruah.
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Use of pesticides and fertilisers has nearly doubled as a result in Assam's 800 big tea plantations, known as gardens, and the rising costs are making Indian tea less competitive.
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Bezbaruah added that overall the climate change was killing the tea industry in India, one of the world's largest producers of tea, as it was impacting the yield and quality.
"North Indian tea has always been a seasonal crop but, our season used to be (of) nine-and-a-half months, now it has contracted to seven-and-a-half-months and the way things are going, may be after 20 years tea will be produced only for six months in the year. So then what do we do with our workers for the balance six months?" asked Bezbaruah.
According to Bezbaruah, tea plantation is as of now an unviable industry. Explaining the math behind the same he says that one worker working one manday produces only 2 to 2.3 kilograms of tea which is worth rupees 345 and already workers are being paid rupees 225, in cash and kind.
He says how much more can a tea plantation owner pay when he also has a lot of other expenses, including those of fertilizers, chemicals, pesticides, irrigation costs, managerial costs, diesel and electricity etc.
The average temperature in Assam has risen by 1.4 degrees Celsius in the past century and rainfall is down by 200 mm a year.
Less rainfall resulted in an 8 percent fall in tea exports last year, according to the Indian Tea Association (ITA).
The tea planters have now taken it upon themselves to counter the ill-effects of climate change.
"Most gardens are investing in irrigation equipments now. We have taken steps to have integrated pest management. Rather than relying only on chemical pesticides we are now relying on biological pesticides, botanical agents, which we are using in lieu of chemicals," said Bezbaruah.
Another issue facing the tea planters is the fact that tea gardens have permanent work forces which have to be fed all round a year but, with the produce falling it is getting harder for planters to shoulder the responsibility of labour costs.
Labour accounts for 60 percent of the total costs for tea firms in Assam, whose prices last year were higher than those auctioned in Mombasa in Kenya, Chittagong in Bangladesh, Limbe in Malawi and Indonesian capital Jakarta.
Profit margins at Kolkata-based McLeod Russel, the world's largest tea producer, are estimated to have fallen to their lowest in six years in the year ended March 31, according to Thomson Reuters data.
To cut labour costs, tea companies like Aideobarie Tea Estates, owned by Assam Tea Planters' Association (ATPA) chairman, Raj Barooah, are exploring greater use of machines to harvest and spray nutrients or pesticides.